Letters to the editor | Saturday, Feb. 3

WaveLinc contract ending soon, businesses to be impacted

I would like to point out what is potentially going to be negatively impacting many residents and businesses in Bucyrus if council does not take action.

Currently, in the Public Lands and Building committee, there is a contract that my business, WaveLinc, holds with the City of Bucyrus for the use of city-owned towers to place broadcast equipment for wireless internet services.

This contract is rapidly nearing its expiration date of 10 years. If the city does not renew the tower contract ,it is going to leave a lot of businesses and residents scrambling with very little notice to find a replacement.

One of the impacted businesses was running an assembly line that they had to halt production on anytime that they lost internet even for minutes at a time. Even if the WaveLinc equipment on those towers was replaceable by another provider, I see no way that can get done in any sort of timely fashion that does not cause massive disruption to those depending on the connections to those towers.

If you do not subscribe to WaveLinc, you are still benefiting from having access to an alternative provider in the city when you call your cable company because they keep raising your bill. The cable company knows which markets have competition and with a loss of a competitive provider in the Bucyrus market they could start raising bills so everyone has potential to be impacted here.

I provided internet service to all city offices for free to the city for almost 10 years. Because of this contract, the city saves tens of thousands of dollars and not once has the city ever sent me notice that they were dissatisfied with those services.

I believe that the recent suggestion from the city that this contract needs to be put up for bid is political retaliation against me, especially since my council president run in the November 2017 election. The city awarded a contract in 2010 to Verizon for lease of city-owned land behind City Hall without putting that property up for bid — by their own definition that was not proper.

Kurt Fankhauser, WaveLinc Communications, Bucyrus

No explanation for subscription deactivation

We have been loyal subscription holders of the Bucyrus Telegraph-Forum for a number of years.

Delivery issues have been fairly good up until the week of Jan. 8. At the start of that week, we received two copies of the paper for the entire week. The following week, we didn't receive any.

When I called I was told our subscription was “deactivated,” per the district manager.

We never received any kind of explanation from anyone at the Telegraph-Forum as to why our account was deactivated. Now, I ask you, is that good customer service? I think not!